tes the worst form of
idolatry and ruins body and soul, destroying the former by hunger and
the latter by a terrified conscience. It makes of God the devil, and
of the devil God. It makes hell of heaven and heaven of hell;
righteousness of sin, and sin of righteousness. This I call
perversion--where strictest justice is the most strenuous wrong.

To this depravity Ezekiel has reference (ch. 13, 18-19): "Thus saith
the Lord Jehovah: Woe to the women that sew pillows upon all elbows,
and make kerchiefs for the head of persons of every stature to hunt
souls! Will ye hunt the souls of my people, and save souls alive for
yourselves? And ye have profaned me among my people for handfuls of
barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die,
and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my
people that hearken unto lies." What is meant but that the blind
teachers of the Law terrify the conscience, and put sin and death in
the place of grace and life, and grace and life where is only sin and
death; and all for a handful of barley and a bit of bread? In other
words, such teachers devote themselves to laws concerning strictly
external matters, things that perish with the using, such as a drink
of water and a morsel of bread, wholly neglecting love and harassing
the conscience with fear of sin unto eternal death; as Ezekiel goes on
to say (verses 22-23): "Because with lies ye have grieved the heart of
the righteous, whom I have not made sad, and strengthened the hands of
the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, and be
saved alive; therefore ye shall no more see false visions, nor divine
divinations: and I will deliver my people out of your hand; and ye
shall know that I am Jehovah."

12. Mark you, it is making the hearts of the righteous sad to load
them with sins when their works are good; it is strengthening the
hands of the wicked to make their works good when they are naught but
sin. Relative to this subject, we read (Ps 14, 5): "There were they in
great fear; for God is in the generation of the righteous." That is,
the sting of conscience fills with fear where there is neither reason
for fear nor for a disturbed conscience. That is feared as sin which
is really noble service to God. The thought of the last passage is:
When they should call upon God and serve him, they fear such conduct
is sin and not divine service; again, when they have need to fear a
service not divi